Nothing Lost (28 page)

“That hotel in Vegas that her father built. The hood. Playland, right?”

“King's Playland,” I said.

“Got him whacked.”

“It did.”

“It got torn down, right.”

“Imploded.”

“On the History Channel.
Great Demos.
I saw it.”

I tried to contemplate Allie watching the History Channel. Hand in hand with Admiral Cunningham.
Great Naval Battles. The Age of the Dreadnoughts. The War Under the Sea. History's Mysteries. Great Demos.

“You know what's there now?” Allie said. “The Angkor Wat. Built on the ground where King's Playland once stood.”

I knew where this was going.

I had read the item.

An AP story about an unidentified and unclaimed Jane Doe in Las Vegas.

I had not put it together.

ANGKOR WAT

No one has come looking, the lead Clark County detective said. You're the first. Her fingerprints don't match any in law enforcement files. There is no missing persons report that matches her description. She could have come from anywhere. We don't know who she was, where she came from, and
what, you know, made her do it. She left a SportSac bag on the roof, one of
those big jobs, over the shoulder, like. There was nothing in it. No wallet, no ID, no driver's license, no money, no note, no cosmetics. Just a small bottle of saline solution, you know the stu f you use when you wear contact lenses, but she wasn't wearing contacts. And some kind of votive candle, you know, you go to mass and light a candle, that kind of candle, all twisted out of shape. Now it's possible someone inside the parking structure rifled the bag when there was all that commotion downstairs on the ground. You saw the surveillancetape. There was an abandoned Toyota Camry on the top-floor parking roof, but it had been there for two weeks and was traced to a gamblerwho had tapped out and left it there. She wasn't a street person, she had nice clothes. Her body has gone unclaimed for forty-three days. The holding period in the Clark County morgue is forty-five days. If she goes unclaimed, she will be sent to a local funeral parlor and be buried in potter's field. The county will pick up the tab. Her stone will read 08-12517.

We call her Jane Doe Jumper, the younger detective said.

We do not call the victim that, the lead detective said.

I meant around here, the younger detective said.

The lead detective stared him down.

With all due respect, the younger detective stammered.

She was sober, the medical examiner said. Unlike most impulsive suicides.There was nothing in her stomach, and no alcohol or controlled substancesin her system. She doesn't fit the demographic profile. Your typical suicide victim is a male Caucasian, sixty-five years of age or over. No indicationof prior injuries, nothing to suggest a struggle, nothing to indicate any sexual activity in any time frame the post-mortem could discover. This wasn't out the third floor, this was off the roof of a twelve-story structure, this was a woman who knew what she was doing, wanted to do it. It took a lot of courage.

I buried Teresa in Mantoloking, N.J., alongside Brendan Thomas Kean and Moira Twomey Kean. Stanley came with me to Mantoloking. I always wanted to meet Teresa Kean, he said, bundling himself against the cold. She always wanted to meet you, too, Stanley, I said.

Allie Vasquez was the only other person I told. For a long time, she didn't speak, and then she said, I'm sorry, Max.

I thought of calling J.J. up in Powder River country, but there was no reason to.

He was Jim McClure.

I think Teresa was the victim of her own blood.

She was her mother's daughter.

She was her father's daughter.

In the end Blue Tyler and Jacob King drew her in, drew her under.

Push me pull me.

Would she have gone to the Angkor Wat had the father she never knew not been murdered there?

Going to the Angkor Wat had a perfect symmetry to it.

Would she have defended Alice Faith Todt's psychotic half brother had the mother she never knew not come to mind every time she looked at Carlyle?

Carlyle in the perfection of her self-absorption. Who had no sense that acts have consequences. Who treated the acceptance of responsibility as if it were a disease. Who thought life a game in which she was always the winner. Who was ignorant of and uncaring about the devastation she had left in her wake.

All that was a long time ago.
I think of Teresa every day.